Lois Lowry

Born: March 20, 1937

Biography

Lois Lowry (born Lois Ann Hammersberg; March 20, 1937) is an American writer credited with more than thirty children's books. She has won two Newbery Medals, for Number the Stars in 1990 and The Giver in 1994. For her contribution as a children's writer, she was a finalist in 2000 (and U.S. nominee again in 2004, as well as a finalist in 2016) for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books. Her book Gooney Bird Greene won the 2002 Rhode Island Children's Book Award. In 2007 she received the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for her contribution in writing for teens. In 2011 she gave the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture; her lecture was titled "UNLEAVING: The Staying Power of Gold ". She was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Brown University in 2014. As an author, Lowry is known for writing about difficult subject matters within her works for children. She has explored such complex issues as racism, terminal illness, murder, and the Holocaust among other challenging topics. She has also explored very controversial issues of questioning authority such as in The Giver quartet. Her writing on such matters has brought her both praise and criticism. In particular, her work The Giver, the first novel in The Giver quartet, has been met with a diversity of reactions from schools in America, some of which have adopted it as a part of the mandatory curriculum, while others have prohibited the book's inclusion in classroom studies. A film adaptation of The Giver was released in 2014.